Testimonia

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Jerome : "A wise man's mind tends to his right; while a fool's mind tends to his left. Even on the road as the fool walks, he lacks sense, and proclaims to all that he is a fool. "And in the Gospel it is taught that a wise man's left does not know what his right is doing. And when we are hit on the right side of the face, we do not show the left cheek to he who hit us, but the other one. For a wise man does not have a left side in him, but is in fact completely the right side. And when the Saviour comes to judge us, the lambs will stand on the right, and the goats on the left. It is written in the prophets that "the Lord knows the ways to the right, which are wrong, and actually lead to the left." [Prov. 4, 27.]. Therefore he who is wise always thinks about the future, because it leads him to the right. But he who is foolish always thinks of the present, because it is set in the left. What follows has also been said by the philosopher poet, who says, "the right leads to the walls of the lower world, this is our path to Elysium, but the left is for the wicked. That gives out punishments and sends people down to the nether regions" [Virg. Aen. 6, 541/543.]. Firmianus of our time in the famous work of his Institute recalls the passage about left and right, and argues that this is about virtues and about vices. [Lactant. Divin. Instit. VI, 3,6-CSEL 19, p.486, 166sqq.] And we shouldn't think that this is contrary to that passage, which says, "do not go to the right, nor to the left" [Prov. 4, 27.]. In the first passage the right is taken to mean good; but in the second it is not just right but also the decline to the right. We should not know more than we need to know, since virtues are in the middle and all excess in a vice. In the following verse though he says, "but on the path that the fool walks, his heart is in need", and he says: "all is foolishness" or "all are fools". This is the meaning: A fool hopes that all others sin as he himself sins, and judges all others by his own standards. Then Symmachus has interpreted it in this way: but when the fool walks along the road, he supposes that all are stupid as he is. But the Septuagint has another meaning, which says, 'all things which he thinks are foolish, are the most vain'. — Commentary on Ecclesiastes

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